{"id":150,"date":"2025-05-04T09:00:18","date_gmt":"2025-05-04T16:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=150"},"modified":"2025-05-04T09:00:18","modified_gmt":"2025-05-04T16:00:18","slug":"is-tokyos-obviously-for-foreign-tourists-wagyu-sukiyaki-crepe-delicious-enough-for-a-local","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=150","title":{"rendered":"Is Tokyo\u2019s obviously for-foreign-tourists wagyu sukiyaki crepe delicious enough for a local?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700875\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-1.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span><strong>We could be falling into a tourist trap in Asakusa, or we could be falling in meaty love<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>One of the latest developments in the Japanese restaurant scene is the emergence of <strong>\u201cinbound food,\u201d<\/strong> culinary creations targeted squarely at foreign tourists from overseas with plenty of money in their pockets thanks to the weak yen. Moreover, <a href=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/2024\/03\/02\/beware-the-rise-of-overpriced-inbound-don-at-tourist-spots-in-japan\/\">a lot of inbound food is meant to cater to customers whose purchasing power outstrips their familiarity with authentic Japanese cuisine<\/a>, often cramming luxurious ingredients with internationally famous names into places where they\u2019re not generally found in meals made by Japanese chefs for Japanese diners.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, you\u2019re most likely to encounter inbound food in neighborhoods that attract a lot of foreign tourists, such as the area around Sensoji Temple in <strong>Tokyo\u2019s Asakusa district<\/strong>. And sure enough, on a recent stroll through Asakusa our Japanese-language reporter <strong>Takuya Inaba<\/strong> spotted a very inbound-y looking offering at cafe called<strong> Anna\u2019s Crepe<\/strong>, which also has a takeout window.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700876\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-2.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cPREMIUM WAGYU JAPANESE BLACK BEEF,\u201d<\/strong> announced the store\u2019s sign in all-cap, giant-font text, displayed much more prominently than its Japanese-text equivalent. The sign then goes on to indicate that this is a <strong>\u201cshoulder loin sukiyaki crepe,\u201d<\/strong> name-dropping another Japanese foodstuff that\u2019s known around the world.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700877\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-3.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>This is obviously an inbound-oriented crepe\u2026and yet, Takuya was intrigued<\/strong>. So he decided to roll the dice on this rolled-up luxury item, and ordered a Premium Wagyu Japanese Black Beef Shoulder Loin Sukiyaki Crepe with two slices of beef for <strong>1,580 yen<\/strong> (US$10.90), about three times as much as you\u2019d usually pay for a normal takeout crepe in Japan.<\/p>\n<p>\u25bc Though looking at the rest of Anna\u2019s Crepe\u2019s options, even their sweet ones are pretty pricey.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700878\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-4.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700879\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-5.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>To Takuya\u2019s pleasant surprise, the wagyu crepe the staff handed over to him looked even tastier than the one in the photo. <strong>Sukiyaki is traditionally eaten by dipping the strips of beef into raw egg just before eating them, so the crepe is topped with an egg yolk, and it was perfectly rounded, with an enticing orange-gold hue<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700880\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-6.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Takuya started by breaking up the yolk so that it could seep into the rest of the crepe\u2026<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700881\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-7.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u2026<strong>and then it was time to take the first bite<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700882\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-8.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"358\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>It was <em>startlingly<\/em> delicious<\/strong>. Takuya had been braced for the possibility that the strips of wagyu beef would be tiny, just enough to cover the crepe\u2019s opening at the top. <strong>Instead, they stretched all the way to the bottom tip of the cone, delivering marvelous meaty mouthfuls from start to finish<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700883\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-9.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This wasn\u2019t a case of quantity without quality, either. The beef was <strong>tender and juicy<\/strong>, and between the flavor and amount, Takuya started to feel like 1,580 yen price was justified, and that it might even represent a surprisingly good deal for what you get.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The crepe even has a bit of a mid-meal twist waiting for you<\/strong>. In addition to wagyu beef, egg yolk, and lettuce, it also has gochujang, the fermented red chili paste often found in Korean cooking. While gochujang isn\u2019t at all a standard condiment for sukiyaki, its presence here, which comes on stronger in the lower strata of the crepe, means that the first half of the meal feels like eating sukiyaki, and the second feels like eating bulgogi.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-700884\" src=\"https:\/\/soranews24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/05\/WC-10.jpg?w=640\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>So while Takuya, a native Japanese guy who\u2019s not even a domestic tourist when he\u2019s in Tokyo, clearly isn\u2019t the target market for this crepe, he\u2019s glad he gave it a shot, and next time he might just have to splurge for the even more premium three-slice version.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Location information<\/strong><br \/>\nAnna\u2019s Crepe\/ \u30a2\u30f3\u30ca\u306e\u30af\u30ec\u30fc\u30d7<br \/>\nAddress: Tokyo-to, Taito-ku, Asakusa 2-6-14<br \/>\n\u4f4f\u6240\u3000\u6771\u4eac\u90fd\u53f0\u6771\u533a\u6d45\u83492-6-14<br \/>\nOpen noon-5 p.m.<br \/>\nClosed Mondays (unless Monday is a holiday, in which case closed the following day)<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/anna-crepe-galette.com\/crepe\/index.html\">Website<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Photos \u00a9 SoraNews24<\/em><br \/>\n<em>\u25cf Want to hear about SoraNews24\u2019s latest articles as soon as they\u2019re published? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/RocketNews24En\">Follow us on Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RocketNews24En\">Twitter<\/a>!<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We could be falling into a tourist trap in Asakusa, or we could be falling in meaty love. One of the latest developments in the Japanese restaurant scene is the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}